Over Your Dead Body

by Tony Masero

  Belle hissed in his ear and Kirby turned sharply to face the rear of the room. ‘Sit!’ he ordered, his gun hand dropping towards his pistol. The men froze at his command. There were three of them and two had already half-risen from their chairs.

  ‘This don’t concern you, so don’t risk it for this dumb bastard behind the bar.’

  Slowly, he returned his gaze to the barman. ‘I ain’t about to ask you again,’ he said.

  ‘Hey,’ said the man, holding up open palms. ‘No need, fella. He’s been on a week long drunk; he’s sleeping it off with the blacksmith’s wife next door. Cain shot the blacksmith down dead in here that night when the place was busted up, and then he took a hold of the woman. Been here a fortnight drinking and carrying on.’

  ‘And you let him just do it?’ said Kirby with a hint of disgust in his voice.

  The barman frowned, ‘What are you? The law or something. Well, I ain’t, I don’t get paid to go after no gunsel like Cain Lemon.’

  ‘Watch out!’ cried Belle suddenly.

  In a blur, Kirby’s gun was in his hand as he swung in a tight crouch. The three men had risen from their seats and spaced themselves out at the end of the room, one had his pistol in his hand and Kirby fired at him first. The gunman arched over, the bullet taking him high in the chest and throwing him over backwards into the chair he had just left.

  Walking towards the remaining two, Kirby advanced down the bar length, his pistol held out straight in front of him.

  Both men were drawing their weapons and Kirby kept on firing without pause as he walked. His shots struck home. One man’s arm flew aside as the sleeve was ripped open and blood spun out in a string. The other man buckled as if punched in the stomach. Kirby, his face set tight, put another one in the arm-wounded man and dropped him in a tumbled heap.

  Smoke was filling the room and the harsh rap of the pistol shots boomed in the narrow enclosure.

  The gut shot man dropped to his knees, arms wrapped across his stomach and his eyes looking pleadingly up at Kirby.

  ‘You got a few minutes left,’ said Kirby in a hard voice. ‘You want them or you want me to finish it now?’

  The loud shot fired close behind Kirby made him instinctively hunch his shoulders before spinning around. He was in time to see that Belle had placed one from her .38 in the bartender who was hovering behind the bar, a bung hammer in his raised hand. Without hesitation, Kirby shot the man with his last shell and the barman wobbled unsteadily on his feet for a second before gazing ceiling-wards and dropping down behind the bar.

  ‘He was coming up behind you,’ Belle explained in a shaky voice. ‘I had to shoot him.’

  ‘You did fine, girl.’ Kirby knelt down beside the fallen men and checked if they were living or not. The gut shot victim was still on his knees and groaning pitifully and Kirby stood over him, reloading his pistol.

  ‘He telling the truth?’ Kirby asked, with a head-jerk towards the bar. ‘Lemon next door with this widow woman?’

  The man nodded briefly, ‘Get me some help will you?’ he gasped painfully.

  ‘There ain’t no help to be found for fifty miles, friend,’ said Kirby concentrating on his reloading. ‘Besides would you have got me any, if I’d have been lying there?’

  ‘Kirby?’ asked Belle tentatively.

  ‘Go outside, honey,’ advised Kirby, cocking the reloaded gun.

  ‘Kirby,’ she said again, this time more plaintively.

  ‘Listen,’ he said to her in a cold tone. ‘You want to go on a blood hunt; this is what it comes down to. There ain’t no pleasure in it, best you know that right now.’

  He swung the pistol up and placed it next to the wounded man’s head and pulled the trigger.

  ‘That’s the best I could do for him,’ he said as he brushed past Belle on his way out.

  Belle stared for a moment at the bloody heap of tangled corpses lying amongst a haze of gun smoke before she turned on her heel and followed Kirby outside.

  The blacksmith’s shop was a large barn-like building, the front was open to the street and the cold forge inside was hung with an array of tools that were black in the dim shadowed interior. Kirby was working at a door alongside that was the entrance to the blacksmith’s room above the shop. Belle looked up to the single room standing alone above the forge. The windows were dark and there was no sign of life inside.

  Kirby had the door open and with gun drawn he quietly began to climb the steep stairs inside. Slowly, Belle followed behind him, climbing each step on tiptoe and watching Kirby above her as he reached the top landing.

  Kirby pushed open the door with his gun barrel and stepped inside. Belle was up the last few steps quickly and peered around the open door. Over Kirby’s shoulder she could see two humped shapes under a sprawl of sheets.

  The windows had not been open for a while and there was the rank funky odor of sex in the room mixed with the sour vinegar smell of stale liquor and old tobacco smoke. Kirby stepped over to the bed and gently pulled back the covering sheet. He placed his pistol barrel against a tousled head and cocked back the hammer. The unmoving figure uttered a snuffled snore but the shape beside started and a woman’s voice gasped.

  ‘Who’s there?’ she asked.

  ‘Get out, lady,’ said Kirby. ‘Belle, see her out.’

  The woman was naked under the sheets and she clutched one to her as she climbed from the bed. An array of dark bruises was marked and easily visible on the pale skin of her arms in the dim light.

  ‘Don’t hurt me,’ she begged. ‘Please, no more.’

  As Belle came forward to reassure her, Kirby prodded harder with the gun.

  ‘Come on, wake up, dummy,’ he growled.

  ‘Wha….’ moaned Cain Lemon. ‘Whassamatter?’

  ‘You got visitors, come on, Cain. Open them baby blues and say hi.’

  Cain snorted and suddenly came to, he started to rise but Kirby pushed him back down again hard with the gun barrel in his cheek. ‘Been a while, ain’t it?’ Kirby said.

  ‘What you doing here, Langstrom?’ growled Cain, finally registering where he was and what was happening.

  ‘Come to take up where we left off. Now if you’ve a pistol under that pillow I recommend you don’t go for it.’

  ‘You mind if I sit up and you take that iron out of my face?’ He had shaved his beard off and his face looked narrow and pinched.

  ‘Do it,’ said Kirby, stepping back but keeping the gun pointed.

  Cain sat up arranging the sheets around himself decorously as he did so. ‘I thought it would be that lawman that’d come looking.’

  ‘He’ll get to you in good time, no doubt. But I want a few words first.’

  Cain looked away out of the window, he scratched at his jaw forgetting there was no beard there any longer and pausing at the recollection. ‘Don’t know if I want any words with you. I’m still holding Bolt and Malachi against you, Langstrom. I ain’t forgetting that.’

  ‘Make sure you don’t add your own name to that list,’ said Kirby. ‘You joined up with Hill and Bellows, right?’

  Cain chuckled, ‘Hard not to, the parcel of gold they had.’

  ‘So you got your share?’

  Cain sniffed, ‘Not so you’d notice, they lit out and left me high and dry.’

  ‘Is that so? Maybe they didn’t like your company too well.’

  ‘Pair of two-bit punks,’ Cain spat.

  ‘Where they headed?’

  Cain looked at him slyly, ‘That’s what you’re after, huh? Wondered why I was still breathing. Find out where they’ve gone and only then you put a .45 slug in my noddle. Oh, no,’ he shook his head. ‘I don’t think so.’

  Kirby pulled the trigger and fired a shot into the bedstead next to Cain’s head. The flash and boom in the dark room was deafening and splintering crash of shot split the headboard and sent splinters flying.

  ‘Ow!’ howled Cain, clutching at his ear. ‘I felt that.’

  ‘One inch further over and
you wouldn’t be feeling a thing anymore,’ Kirby smiled wryly. ‘Now start talking or do we start with the left ear and progress inwards.’

  Cain rubbed his ear reflectively, ‘I don’t know where they’ve gone. Like I said they lit out on me.’

  ‘They must have said something.’

  Cain drew a long breath, ‘Well, I sure don’t owe those two a thing. I heard them whispering one time, the only word I could make out was ‘Baltimore’.’

  ‘Baltimore, the city?’

  ‘I guess, is there another one?’

  ‘There was nothing else?’

  ‘Aw!’ spat Cain. ‘Those two were thick as thieves. Whispering and carrying on like schoolgirls. Pissed me off and I told them so, that’s when they got all ratty and pulled out.’

  ‘Okay,’ said Kirby. ‘You can get up now.’

  ‘My pants are over there on that chair, mind passing them over?’

  ‘I didn’t say you could get dressed, I said you can get up.’

  ‘Now, wait a minute,’ complained Cain, with a worried look at Kirby. ‘You’re not going to walk me out of here buck-naked are you? That ain’t decent.’

  ‘Didn’t worry you when you was humping that dead man’s wife in here, did it?’

  Cain clutched the sheet to his chest in an almost feminine manner, ‘Come on, Langstrom. You can’t do this. Walk me down in the street in my birthday suit, that ain’t right.’

  ‘Just shut up and get up and you can leave that sheet behind too.’

  ‘No,’ said Cain, suddenly obstinate. ‘I ain’t going to do it.’

  Kirby’s second shot creased Cain’s cheek and took away a section of his earlobe. ‘Damn!’ he shouted, jumping out of the bed. ‘Alright, godammit! I’m going.’

  He was a tall man, broad chested and well muscled and the only part of his body that had ever seen the sun was his upper face, the rest was a white as a new moon.

  ‘Down the stairs,’ Kirby ordered.

  Covering his private parts and cursing Kirby roundly, Cain stumbled down the stairs.

  They reached the street to find Belle comforting the widow woman clad in the sheet and Belle’s slicker and standing in the shadow of the blacksmith’s high-topped open doorway.

  ‘He raped me,’ shrieked the woman at sight of Cain. ‘Killed my man and then forced himself on me.’

  ‘You didn’t complain,’ growled Cain. ‘Best damned time you’d had in your life.’

  ‘Drunken filthy fornicating beast!’ she screamed at him.

  A few of the residents were poking their heads out now, finally braving all the sounds of gunfire and shouting. They stayed in the shadows though and watched from afar.

  Cain looked around at the silent outlined silhouettes, ‘What you all looking at?’ he roared. ‘Is this what you want to see?’ He uncapped his hands and exposed himself to the street. ‘How about that for an eye-full, huh?’ he roared and laughed wildly.

  The six-pound cold steel hammerhead hit him hard on the back of the cranium and split it open, ‘Son-of-a-bitch!’ he mumbled before falling face down into the street. The blacksmith’s widow stepped across his prone form and before Kirby could stop her she swung her husband’s horseshoe hammer from high over her head and broke Cain’s skull wide open.

  ‘There, you swine,’ she panted, as Kirby pulled her away. ‘That’s for me and my husband.’

  Chapter Thirteen

  Next day they crossed the Des Moines River at the Quincy railroad junction and there Kirby was able to pick up his waiting messages at the telegraph office. Kirby advised Belle he had received an urgent telegram to meet with up Allan Pinkerton not many miles south of their present position at the town of Springfield.

  Baltimore was still a way off across country on the coast and they were only a few miles from Springfield by comparison, so they agreed to stop there and see what Pinkerton wanted.

  They took the short journey by train and arrived at the Springfield station by mid-afternoon and at the station Belle met the famous detective for the first time.

  Pinkerton was a forty-one year old Scot of stocky build with a domed head and short hair; he boasted a thickly bearded chin and a broad Glaswegian accent that Belle found a little difficult to understand at times. Short and swift in his movements, he was a brisk and serious looking man obviously dedicated to his mission, yet despite his grim features he greeted Kirby with a cheery grin.

  ‘It’s great to see you again, my good man,’ he smiled, shaking Kirby firmly by the hand.

  ‘Sir,’ said Kirby respectfully. ‘I’d like you to meet Miss Belle Slaughter, she’s been assisting me in some problems we found over at Variable Breaks.’

  With a glittering eye, Pinkerton examined Belle quickly. ‘I real pleasure, Mistress Slaughter,’ he said, bowing over her hand. ‘It’s not often I see young Langstrom beside such a fair creature. Normally it’s nae more than dust and gun oil that shall accompany him.’

  ‘The pleasure’s mine,’ said Belle, smiling in her best winning way.

  ‘Well,’ said Pinkerton. ‘Will you both accompany me to the hotel tearoom? We’ll find you some rooms and I’ll hear your full report there Kirby, and then fill you in on some facts that deserve attention.’

  Once they had been found rooms and after they had washed off some of their travel dust they joined Pinkerton downstairs in the hotel tearoom. It was a comfortable and well-lit high-windowed room populated by small cloth-covered circular tables and although almost empty it bore a gentile atmosphere. Belle had changed from riding gear into her gown and duly impressed the few clients present as she joined the two men.

  ‘It seems you have been unfortunate, Mistress Slaughter. Losing your property in such an awful manner,’ commiserated Pinkerton as he held a chair for her and they were seated.

  ‘It was very distressing,’ Belle agreed.

  ‘Your intention is to bring the bounder responsible to book so Kirby tells me.’

  ‘That is my sincerest hope.’

  ‘I wish you well of it,’ said Pinkerton. ‘I hope you will forgive me though if I take Kirby away from you for a while, as we have a most pressing matter at hand. However,’ he paused thoughtfully for a moment. ‘Perhaps you would care to stay and listen?’

  ‘I should be most interested,’ said Belle agreeably. ‘The work of your agency is well known as a fine adjunct to the law and it would be fascinating to hear more of your accomplishments.’

  Pinkerton fiddled with his beard a moment, ‘I should perhaps confess that is a somewhat selfish offer on my part. I see you are a woman of intelligence as well as looks and it might be that you may be of assistance to us in this venture.’

  Belle tilted her head curiously, ‘Pray continue,’ she said.

  ‘You may perhaps not know it,’ Pinkerton went on. ‘But I am not adverse at all to the presence of the feminine gender in our ranks. We already have a number of female operatives engaged in our present activities.’

  ‘A relief to hear it,’ said Belle, a little lightly.

  ‘Oh, no, Mistress. These are dangerous times and one should not underestimate the risks involved. If you are to come along with us in this, I trust you will be aware of that. We are on the verge of a war and there are forces at work that will stop at nothing to achieve their ends. Not even of bloody murder, I fear.’

  ‘I understand,’ Belle answered calmly.

  ‘Very well,’ said Pinkerton, turning to Kirby. ‘So tell we what you’ve been up to in more detail.’

  Concisely, Kirby retold their tale and also of Lomas’s involvement concerning the gold and Ward Hill’s absconding along with Joe Bellows, including along the way their revealing conversation with Cain Lemon.

  ‘Baltimore! You say,’ said Pinkerton with a sudden gleam in his eye as Kirby finished. ‘Why this could be most relevant to the very mission I am to present you with.’

  ‘That a fact?’ said Kirby.

  ‘You will know,’ Pinkerton said conspiratorially, leaning forward and
lowering his voice. ‘That the new President comes from this very town where we sit?’

  Both listeners nodded, drawing their heads closer to hear his words better.

  ‘Mr. Lincoln is set to travel from here shortly after his home visit. It is the agency’s task to see he arrives safely. He is intending to make a whistle-stop tour encouraging support for the conflict on his journey back to Washington and I have grave fears for his safety along this route. There are many Southern sympathizers on the way and at any time they may be prepared to attempt some form of attack on his person. What I need is information,’ growled Pinkerton. ‘Any word or whisper of such an intent. Any suspicious activity that might prepare us.’

  ‘How does Baltimore come into this?’ asked Kirby.

  ‘Mister Lincoln is a controversial politician, standing as he does against slavery and Maryland is a slave state and a hot bed of secessionists, a likely place for some move to be made. It is a place we must past through and once he leaves the Northern Central Railway and joins the Baltimore and Ohio train at Baltimore that is where rail traffic is slowed. The railcars are forced to be horse-drawn through the city due to city ordnance. Three railroads have terminal there and all carriages must be drawn by team through the streets to make connection. It is an ideal situation for ambush. What I need for you to do is travel ahead of us. The route from here will be well protected and I have plans in place to be assured the President shall reach Baltimore safely. It is the weakest link on the journey, if you two can find out anything to warn us in advance it will be a blessing indeed.’

  ‘Well, it’s a tough one alright,’ agreed Kirby. ‘But maybe I’d be better served travelling on the train. Might be a gun hand there could help out more.’

  Pinkerton shook his head, ‘No, it is Mistress Belle I am thinking of. You see, Kirby, she will fit most ably into Baltimore society, you, if you’ll forgive me, are more fitted to rough and ready work. But I’ll not have the lady here placed in any unnecessary danger, you must escort and protect her.’ He turned to Belle. ‘You see, my dear, your beauty will enable you to make a show in city society. Men will flock to meet you and I’m sure you are most capable of inducing them to speak freely in your presence. Your Tennessee accent alone will make those of a Southern Confederate inclination more attracted.’